Any attack that's based on % weapon damage will proc both skills and enchantments. Shadowshot deals 76% weapon damage, and thus procs skills and enchantments. Glaive Throw, on the other hand, bases its damage entirely on player level, and will not proc skills or enchantments.

Any attack that's based on % weapon damage will proc both skills and enchantments. Shadowshot deals 76% weapon damage, and thus procs skills and enchantments. Glaive Throw, on the other hand, bases its damage entirely on player level, and will not proc skills or enchantments.

This is what I would assume as well. The passive skills mention that they work of abilities that use weapon damage.

Oh, that's what I wanted to talk about. I'm doing Mapworks right now, and I'm seeing some things I can't get to. A level on a lowered platform that I can't get to, no matter what. I saw a ledge with a TON of gold on it and some monsters. I walked around, destroyed every single thing I could destroy, attacking every object on the zone, and could find a way to the ledge. I found a couple things like this during the main quest too. Are there just some things that can't be reached, or am I missing something?

Hm. So I did a little testing. Seems Dalliah is right about %weapon skills trigger effect procs. This seems to also work with effects which are conveyed over time. A distinction from skills and effects which are inflicted over time.

However, HP and MP leech don't seem to proc off anything but basic weapon attacks.

Tried Embermage, Outlander and Engineer. Everything was consistent across those classes.

I recently quit my Focus/Vit Berserker, due to dying all the time (in the end it turns out it was due to a bugged socket effect that had a proc that deals damage to friendly characters, in one of my friends' weapons, which hit me for well over 1400 if crit and kept me wondering a loooong time why I was getting twoshot all the time).

[Skills]I could have gone with Prismatic bolt, but that's exactly the thing I was trying to avoid. I wanted to make use of pistols and by making use of, I mean, really making use of them. So instead, I picked up two skills that are effective at range, without having to spam, allowing me to make full use of the pistols.

Thunder Locus:

Basically a nuke, that starts really hurting groups of mobs when you maxed it out. It seems to proc all Brands as long as they have the status effects that require their procs, so a single hit can unleash Mayham, let alone 4.

Blazing Pillar:

Too good to pass up. Everything will be burned, once maxed out and your damage comes from status effects that proc Brands, so this seems like a nobrainer.

Then, there's the abilities that mainly sustain this build:

Fire,Ice, Lightning Brand:

They don't seem to have a cooldown and seem to proc on every mainhand attack and every execute attack. So far I've been unable to see whether the offhand attack does or does not proc the burst. It could just be a limit on the amount of visuals per frame/second, or it could be that the offhand is simply not counted as a seperate attack, or that execute attacks seem to proc the Brands, while it's actually the offhand proccing. There's just too much damage flying across my screen to pinpoint the truth.
The Brands are your main source of damage. Paired with your incredibly fast Pistol fire, you'll be Branding your foes to death in no time.

Besides damage, you also need survive.

Prismatic Rift:

No better way to keep your enemies at bay. The Embermage normally doesn't want to get hit, but double so with the pistols, because they're only good when you're able to spam your attacks. Constantly kiting will hurt your dps and killratio. Sometimes you want to take that one hit and finish something off.

Not in the current build, but definitely one I'm going to try soon, Frost Wave.

Seems like this skill could potentially slow down a group of mobs in one go, which is great for both you and your pistols,as well as your Thunder Locus.

Immolation Aura

Free burn damage, but more importantly, damage absorb. Nuff said.

Frost Phase

1 skillpoint, but definitely a requirement in any build. Deals damage on both ends of the jump, has no cooldown besides your mana pool and occasionally freezes targets that go boom when they get hit by Thunder Locus. There is no better offensive escape tool. I just have to resist the urge to use it to jump into groups, instead of out of them.

And last and least.

Frozen Fate

It's not a bad skill, at all, and definitely worth expanding if you have the points. Originally that was the intention, but I stepped away from that path early in the game and went for Elemental Attunement and Charge Mastery instead, when I still thought they were more useful. In hindsight, I'd probably turn those around.

Elemental Attunement

I took it up, because I assumed that all status effects would benefit from the extra duration. Sadly, it only applies to Elemental Attunement, so it's more or less a filler skill right now, that might help in a kiting situation, where you do not have the time to stand still and inflict new statusses manually. Not sure I'd recommend this.

Charge Mastery

When I started this build, I thought I would be "abusing" the time during Full Charge to cast spells and go back to pistols when I'd be charging (and charge really fills up fast with pistols), but I found out that casting often takes too much time to be worth it and quite frankly doesn't match up to the speed and procrate of the guns. I gues that's a direct result of focussing on DEX instead of FOCUS. Right now, I'm mostly using charge to Frost Phase round and round, when I'm kiting large groups. Thunder Locus packs a good punch against mobs that have static and frozen.

[Gear]
I'm not entirely clear on the entire spectrum of gear that is most useful, but I'll make an attempt either way.
The first thing I tend to pick up, if allowed by the RNG, are two decent pistols with each 2 slots to socket. I have not yet encountered pistols with more than 2, but more is obviously better. You need a minimum of 3 total. Put one of each element in the slots and whichever you prefer after 3. All elemental damage types have a chance to inflict a debuff and you want to have them up as often as possible.

Second, are stats. Your damage comes from Elemental Brands and Crits. Do not underestimate Crit, so do not entirely neglect DEX on gear, but generally you only need as much DEX as required to carry the best pistols. Focus seems to be a reliable way of getting more attacks and more attacks means more hits, which in turn means more damage. The reason I've almost doubled the amount of DEX versus the amount of focus in the skill builder, is due to the high DEX requirement on Pistols, highest being 312.

In general, you want to mainly pick Focus on Gear, unless you need to match a DEX requirement.

Damage doesn't just come from stats, so you need to build something around it that increases the damage output. There's several options that add high amounts of extra damage to your attacks and I'm not entirely sure which is best, so I'll just list them here.

%Attack speed%

%Crit chance%

%Elemental damage%

-All Armor on hit

Three of the above affect all attacks, being crit chance, -all armor and attack speed. Attack speed has the added benefit that each hit can proc multiple effects, all of which can crit, and attack speed also increases the amount of executes you get per [timeframe], due to the increase of attacks.

Therefore my choice of gear is usually ruled by preference: ASPD > CRIT > -ALLARMOR > ELEDMG. I might pick up ELE damage when it's a lot on one item (50+%) and either Fire or Lightning. You tend to get less Ice Brand procs, so extra ice damage is a waste.
All that's left, is survival, for which you need all armor types and VIT.

Statistics are inaccurate; only one item was chosen of a selection per itemslot.

To be frank, most items do not really benefit an Embermage that focusses on Fire and Lightning damage. A lot more Embermage gear seems to increase frost damage and only by a few percent. You'll most likely be best off getting rares with perfect stats.

And as you can see, I'm also not adding a lot of items with %attackspeed%, due to the fact that most really good attack speed gear belongs to say, an Outlander only set. Rares, once more, would probably be better to seek out.

[Gameplay]
This is where it gets tough. The first majority of levels (14) , you will not have anything that counts as a cast. You’ll start by building some passives (based on my reflections, you might pick up Frozen Fate instead of Charge Mastery, for example). Prismatic Rift would be a good choice to start off with.

You could, also, invest one point in Prismatic Bolt, which will make your life a lot easier the first 14 levels and possibly add ‘some’ functionality after.
Without Prismatic Bolt, you’ll be kiting a lot and probably dying a lot. The best/easiest way to traverse the first 14 levels would likely be by getting carried. That’s from an “Elite difficulty perspective”.

Once you’re level 14, you want to focus points in Thunder Locus, to get those multiple targets as soon as possible, while evening out Fire and Lightning Brand and with lesser urgency, Ice Brand. Once Blazing Pillar become available, get a few percentages in burn chance. The DPS of your weapons still counts, especially when you crit, so do not neglect (a lot) better weapons in favor of more sockets. Fact remains, you need those effects on mobs as soon and often as possible, so having sockets is always better than having none, but if you can replace a 60ish dps pistol that has 2 sockets with a 126dps pistol that has 1 or no slots, pick the 126dps pistol. You can always slot it from act II.

If you’re playing with multiple people, try to avoid getting hit at all cost, and make effective use of the time you’re Frost Phasing around. Casting Frost Phase and immediately casting two other abilities allows you to teleport away and shorten the time you stand still while casting both Blazing Pillar and Thunder Locus at the same time.

I’m having loads of fun with this build. It’s probably not better than a build with just Prismatic Bolt spam + Brands, but I feel it’s more unique and entirely different and more fun to play.

Ok, I just tested the proc-on-special-attack issue. Flame Hammer is NOT proccing life steal. At least, it's not proccing the life steal you get from map bonuses in map works. 25% would be a very noticeable difference, and I'm not seeing my health go up.

---------- Post added 2012-10-01 at 02:00 PM ----------

Oh, and I had another question. Abilities like Flame Hammer say they do "x % of weapon DPS". Does strength increase that number, or does in only increase the damage bonus you get from melee swings?

Picked this up for myself this weekend. Much more satisfied with it than I was with Diablo 3. I'll have to give this thread a good read later to see if any questions I might have were already covered. Having fun with an Embermage so far.

Similar to the expensive and near-uselessness of enchanting, crafting seems to be just as bad. Take three gems of the same kind, put em together, and get something worse. This is what happens most of the time. It's annoying. I guess I can make a mule or two to store all this stuff. How many characters are you allowed to have?

Similar to the expensive and near-uselessness of enchanting, crafting seems to be just as bad. Take three gems of the same kind, put em together, and get something worse. This is what happens most of the time. It's annoying. I guess I can make a mule or two to store all this stuff. How many characters are you allowed to have?

Later on you can end up with tons of green gems you don't need, so it's nice to be able to change them into blue ones that have different effects, like regen, weapon damage, armor penetration, etc.